Oprah Shamed James Frey. He’s Back Anyway.
June 25, 2025 at 09:02PMI was late to James Frey Week, to the rush of coverage accompanying the latest novel from a writer who was once, briefly, America’s best-known fabulist. I started with Katy Waldman’s review of Frey’s latest novel for The New Yorker, then moved on to Keziah Weir’s Q&A for Vanity Fair before finally landing at Sam Dolnick’s profile for the Times. Each piece has its pleasures, from Waldman’s keen, quotable assessment of the novel (“I’m afraid that I’ll describe his book and no one will believe me”) to a few surprises in Weir’s exchange (“No, I didn’t ask if Charlie was you!”). Dolnick’s story on the Million Little Pieces author simmers with tension, granting Frey his rage and his defensiveness but leaving readers the necessary room to scrutinize over each of Frey’s claims—albeit from chairs less comfortable than a custom Eames.
Twenty years later, Frey sees himself as a maverick and dismisses the controversy with a string of expletives. “We’ve all been told to be polite, to be good little boys, to go to college and follow the rules,” Frey told me from his extra-large mohair Eames chair, which he had custom-made so that he could sit in lotus pose. “Not me.”
He believes that “A Million Little Pieces” reflected his personal experiences while speaking to deeper truths, as art seeks to do. When the facts were pedestrian, he improved them — the truth, but better.
“When Picasso makes a self-portrait, if it’s not photorealist, is it invalid?” he asked. “When Rembrandt painted self-portraits, is he allowed to manipulate the paint to make himself look however he wants himself to look?”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/06/25/james-frey-profile-nytimes/
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